SHORT RIGA

As an individual department within this year’s festival the team behind the wittily titled SHORT RIGA have devised a remarkable feat – altogether three competitions of new shorts from around the world, Baltic student films and a separate category for music videos. Showcased within three respective programmes SHORT RIGA will take over the newly established small theater KINO BIZE as well as organise workshops and host an award ceremony.

The unusual life of Polish anti-communist Adam Jacek Winkler is reanimated in a stylistically brilliant animation film based on Winkler’s drawings, photographs, and diaries. Winkler leaves his home country and settles in Paris; he is an ardent, impulsive and cynical adrenaline addict.

“It’s about time”, says a piece of paper stuck to a windowpane. These words encourage a lonely man to go out into town, but the old man is too slow, and dressing up takes too much time for him to leave the house before it gets dark.

In distant Lithuania, music is heavily controlled by an oppressive special police force called The Beat Patrol, ensuring the quality of beats and basses all over the country. They search neighbourhoods for people listening to bad music, and deliver violent punishments and instant executions to maintain high standards. If you want to live, make sure you only listen to seriously heavy bass tunes, and never ever play the acoustic guitar in public.